What follows are a number of different sources on material on memory accumulated from my studies. Some materials are from my studies at Tulane University in 1973, others are from Naropa University in 1975, while still others are from my studies with Adi Da Samraj (1983-present).
Memory
A Beezone Inquiry
“The world starts from memory, memory in itself as retained in the Alaya universal mind. When we are removed from the influence of false discrimination the whole Vijnana system woven around the Alaya as center experiences a revulsion toward true perception (paravritt). This is the gist of the teaching of the Lankavatara”.
Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, written in 1929
***
Vasana is morally corrupt if it creates an external world and causes us to cling to the idea as real and final.
‘What is mental organ (manas – mind)? It is the object of alayavijnana – storehouse of mind – always having the nature of self-notion (self-conceit) (manyanatmaka) associated with four defilements, viz. the false idea of self (atmadrsti), self-love (atmasneha), the conceit of ‘I am’ (asmimana) and ignorance (avidya).
adapted from ‘The concept of manas in the Lankavatra’, Jikido Takasaki
***
“The object created the subject, and the subject reinforced the object.
So long as dualism is adhered to, there is no Nirvana, no self-realization”.
Lankavatara Sutra
Mind and Habit Energy
“I began to witness the piecemeal return of old sensations and thoughts, then the desires that follow them”
Vasana
The following are from Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, 1929.
Vasana (Memory)
The one most important conception in the system of vijnanas is VASANA – Psychologically vasana is memory, for it is something left after a deed is done, mental or physical, and it is retained and stored up in the ALAYA as a sort of latent (potential) energy ready to be set in motion. This memory or habit-energy, or habitual perfuming is not necessarily individual – the ALAYA being super-individual holds in it not only individual memory but all that has been experienced by sentient beings (collected – stored). When the sutra says that in the ALAYA is found all that has been going on since beginingless time systematically stored up as a kind of seed, this does not refer to individual experiences, but to something general, beyond the individual, making up in a way the background on which all individual psychic activities are reflected.
Therefore, the ALAYA is originally PURE, it is above of TATHA-GATA-HOOD, (one who is gone) where no defilements of the particular arising intellect and affection can reach; purity in terms of logic means universality, and defilement or sin means individuation, from which attachments of various forms are derived.
(The alayavijnana is not perishable as being the tathagatagarbha which represents the prakrtiprabhasvara-citta. – the concept of manas in the Lanedvatdra
Jikido Takasaki)
In short, the world starts from memory, memory in itself as retained in the ALAYA universal is not evil, and when we are removed from the influence of false discrimination the whole vijnana system woven around the ALAYA as center experiences a revulsion torward true perception (paravritti). this is the gist of the teaching of the Lankavatara Sutra.
Suzuki says,
“According to my way of interpreting the Lankvatara, which may not be correct, the Alaya is a sort of universal consciousness, and manas individual empirical consciousness. At the back of the six vijnanas (senses) there must be Manas, the principle of individuation, and also the Alaya, which goes even beyond the foundation of consciousness”
Lankavatara Sutra, British Museum
MANAS – Individualization+
“Manas alone is the Bindu, the cause of creation and preservation.”
Yoga-kundalini Upanishad (belonging to the Krishna-Yajurveda): a minor Sanskrit treatise selected amongst a collection 108 extant upanishads, dating to at least the 1st millennium BC. The Yoga-kundalini-upanishad expounds the theory of Kundalini Yoga and describes the systems of Hatha and Lambika yoga.
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‘What is the definition of the Aggregate of Consciousness (vijnanaskandha)? It is mind (citta), mental organ (manas) and also consciousness (vijnana).
“And there what is mind (citta)? It is alayavijnana (Store-Consciousness) containing all seeds (sarvabijaka), impregnated with the traces (impressions) (vasanaparibhavita) of Aggregates (skandha), Elements (dhatu) and Spheres (ayatana) …
‘What is mental organ (manas)? It is the object of alayavijnana always having the nature of self-notion (self-conceit) (manyanatmaka) associated with four defilements, viz. the false idea of self (atmadrsti), self-love (atmasneha), the conceit of ‘I am’ (asmimana) and ignorance (avidya) …
‘What is consciousness (vijnana)? It consists of the six groups of consciousness (sad vijnanakayah), viz. visual consciousness (caksurvijnana), auditory (srotra), olfactory (ghrana), gustatory (jihva), tactile (kaya), and mental consciousness (manovijnana).
Asanga (4th C) – Alayavijnana – Store Consciousness, Ven. Dr. Walpola Rahula
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- The metaphysical question. What makes an individual the individual and how it is distinguished from all other individuals?
- Does identity – sameness – exist through time. Is there a ‘quality’ of individuality that remains the same over time? If so, what, where, and how does it exist?
Discrimination is the result of memory (VASANA…habit energy) accumulated from the unknown past. VASANA (memory) literally means ‘perfuming’ or ‘fumigation’, that is, it is a kind of energy that is left behind when an act is accomplished and has the power to rekindle the old and seek out new impressions.
Through this ‘perfuming’ reelection takes place which is the thing as discrimination, and we have a world of opposites and contraries with all its practical consequences. The triple world, so-called, is, therefore, the shadow of a self-reflecting and self-creating mind. Hence the doctrine of “MIND ONLY” (cittamatra)
VASANA (habit energy) is so contaminated with ignorance and wrong judgments and all sorts of attachments, it reacts upon an external world in a way detrimental to the realization of truth. The state of realization is obtained by a means of revulsion (Paravritti) at the deepest seat of consciousness know as the Alayavijnana.
Alayavijnana is a kind of mental receptacle where all the memory of one’s past deeds and psychic activities is deposited and preserved in a form of energy called VASANA or habit energy.
This is one of the most important conceptions in the system of Vijnanas (Mind).
Vasana comes from the root VAS meaning “to dwell”, “to stay” or “to perfume” and used in combination, that is, in the sense of a perfuming energy that leaves its essence permanently behind in the things it has perfumed. The Chinese have translated it “habit”, “long usage” or “repeated experience”. Vasana is therefore a kind of super-sensuous energy mysteriously emanating from every thought, every feeling, or every deed one has done or does, which lives latently in the storehouse called Alayavijnana.
Vasana is morally corrupt and logically erroneous inasmuch as it creates an external world and causes us to cling to it as real and final. In modern psychology, we can say that vasana corresponds to memory in its widest sense. This perfuming or leaving impressions is sometimes known as BIJA (memory/sowing seeds).
Psychologically vasana is memory, for it is something left after a deed is done, mental or physical, and it retained and stored in the Alaya as a sort of latent energy ready to be set in motion. this memory or ‘habit-energy’, or ‘habitual perfuming is not necessarily individual’ the Alaya being super-individual holds in it not only individual memory but all that has been experienced by sentient beings. When the sutra says that in the Alaya is found all that has been going on since beginningless time systematically stored up as a kind of seed, this does not refer to individual experiences, but to something general, beyond the individual, making up in a way the background on which all individual psychic activities are reflected. Therefore, the alaya is originally pure, it is the abode of Tathagatahood (Buddhahood), where no defilement’s of the particle arising intellect and affection can reach; purity in terms of logic means universality, and defilement’s or sins means individuation, from which attachments of various forms are derived.
In short, the world starts from memory, memory in itself as retained in the Alaya universal mind. When we are removed from the influence of false discrimination the whole Vijnana system woven around the Alaya as center experiences a revulsion toward true perception (paravritt). This is the gist of the teaching of the Lankavatara.
Notes – March 10, 2022
Conditional Mind – Memory chain
Retained memory – remembered (the “Keeping” – Heidegger)
Collective memory / Individual memory
Alaya – Universal Mind – Ocean of Knowledge
Vasana – habit energy (mechanism of memory) – ‘VAS’ = to dwell
Storehouse (collective unconscious) – Vijnana
State of Realization Aayavijnana = True Perception (paravritt)
Transcendental Self does not have INITSELF a memory
vijnana – superficial – attention must migrate below surface layers (strata) to Deep Psychic core (memory chain)
This life eperience reflect or expresses the remaining tendencies (vasana) of all past time/lives.
Birth is a plunge and a forgetting (loss) – locked in brain – sheath covering sahastra
Memory recedes in unconscious / subconscious / background
Without understanding (consciousness) habits repeat themselves in new environments (transplanting trees)
Deep personality
Cosmic Mandala has laws or habits – Cosmis Light / Spirit Energy retains “information” which is modified ‘potentiality’ – conditionality (karma) – Eternally and constantly potential.
Habit energy cannot be destroyed – can be changed – can be modified (bombs) – can be converted and dissolved in a positive manner. Only permanent resolution is Transcendence and Outshining. None use make obsolete. More energy = more potentially.
Memory in the brain
Memory outside the brain
How Adi Da (Franklin Jones) developed his understanding of the power of mind and desire. The following is from the Knee of Listening, Chapter 11, “The Problem of Mind”.
“For the first two or three weeks after our return to New York I lived and felt and knew as the Divine itself. There was no separation in consciousness, no distracting tendencies, no impurities, and not a trace of dilemma. But, gradually, as the weeks passed, I began to witness the piecemeal return of old sensations and thoughts, then the desires that follow them, and then the actual practice of old habits. When I would sit to meditate in the effortless manner Baba had taught me I would feel these old problems. And it became a matter of conflict in me somehow to make these feelings vanish.
Life in New York seemed to require an energy of involvement that itself created conflict and the mind of effort. So that soon I began to pursue the state I had known in India. It became a problem in me to regain that state. The thing that I had known relieved all effort and amounted only to a free enjoyment of perfect knowledge. But now it began to seem unavailable, a goal requiring another kind of effort.
At first this change was only subtly perceived. I could not admit that I had lost the fundamental reality that had appeared to me at the Ashram. But, gradually, I began to realize, to my horror and despair, that the mind and all its conflict of desire was rising again, untouched by any illumination.
This became a very disturbing reversal for me. (I had not yet become consistently stabilized in the “Witness-Position” . Therefore the mind-in-conflict arose by itself and brought with it all desires and every motive for seeking. 2004 edition) I had thought that the revolutionary awareness of my true nature would be sufficient to destroy every vestige of clinging to the habitual influences of the mind. I thought that knowledge would be purification enough, so that life need only be lived under the direct assumption of what I am in reality.
But this knowledge was not enough. The mind in conflict arose by itself and brought with it all desires and every motive for seeking. Yet, I was unwilling to adapt myself to effort and strife again. It seemed that my Ashram experience had added something vital that fulfilled and extended the awareness that grew in me during my crisis in seminary.
But now that experience, because it held before the mind a kind of proof of the ultimate nature I had sought, served as a goad to seeking, a ground for the demand for that revelation as a continuous state.
I waited for Baba’s letter, hoping that it would bring a new blessing and clarify my trouble. But the weeks passed without a word, and I felt stuck with a vision of internal contradiction that even exceeded the one from which I had been relieved in college.
Now the mind itself, apart from any particular content, appeared as the source of our dilemma, and I wondered by what means the mind should pass and let me be.”
1970 – Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj) – unpublished.
The “prarabdha” karma, the remaining movements of one who understands, is a dramatization or activity that can take any number of forms. He witnesses all that arises as motive and action, he enquires, and realizes all such movements in the Heart. “Prarabdha” is not a matter of indulging various desires and patterns That arise, but of enquiring while free of the necessary attachment to motive and act. “Prarabdha” is not dramatization but enquiry. where any movement is not realized in the Heart, it is only movement, not understanding, and enquiry follows all such things.
One who understands may appear in many forms of action, for his life is ordinary. It is only that he understands and enquires, and so all his action becomes a creative occasion of truth. He enquires until understanding is perfect as the Heart. Then he lives only as truth, without drama, until the stillness takes his life.
Those who understand in truth seem to live a drama of many kinds. Those who live as radical understanding are only true to understanding. Those who understand perfectly no longer appear outside the Heart. They are not seen in any form, but such are the Heart itself.
“From the spring of 1968 until the early summer of 1969 I attempted to resolve the problems of radical consciousness by a concentrated effort to dissolve or disarm the ongoing, limiting effects of the mind. For the time being, it seemed that the stream of thought and the automatic pattern of motivations ariving moment to moment was the primary obstacles to real consciousness. I spent that year working in an oranization called Scientology. My attention was drawn to every kind of programmatic recovery of the memories and subliminal reactions that enforce patterns of thought and behavior. But the work I pursued these means, the more endless the content of the mind appeared to be. And I began to realize that I had already produced this experiment in myself during my period of writing in California.
Thus, in time, the impetus behind this experiment revealed its own fruitlessness and the energy behind it simply wore down and disappeared. The result of this quieting and disinterest in the problem of the mind was a simply, effortless return to the state of awareness I had enjoyed at the ashram, and in the dramatic moments of exhileration and understanding I had known in the seminary, in college and in the natural clarity of my childhood.
One evening, while I was relaxing after a day of concentrated work in some of the Scientology exercies, there was a sudden, unexpected abandonment of all my resistance to the internal operation of the “shakti”. All the centers of my being relaxed without apparent cause, perhaps only because there was no absorbing motive to contract or concentrate them. All tasks, all efforts, all problematic approaches to the realization of existence simply ended in me. They had proven themselves fruitless, and there was no movement in me. Then the Shakti, the natural power of conscious existence, moved freely through me, taking the mind and all my reasons with it. this event took place in Los Angeles in May 1969. I quickly return to New Yoirk and arranged my separation from Scientology.”
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Thus, when the old problems began to arise, and I saw no immediate way to use the specific methods Baba described or even to enforce the vision of my particular experience, I felt moved to find a solution to the dilemma by any means available to me. The history of my own development led me to be open to any form of solution, whether or not it involved the specific means or mentality of yoga.
The Knee of Listening – Chapter 12 – The Search for Release From the Mind: Scientology
The history of my experience as a seeker is a course of experimentation in relation to the forces of life conceived as the problem of existence on various levels of experience. In college I dealt with truth as an intellectual problem. In my period of writing and self-exploitation I dealt with it as a vital and emotional problem. With Rudi I dealt with it as a moral and psychic problem. In Scientology I dealt with it as the problem of the mind. With Baba I dealt with it as a spiritual problem, the problem of super-consciousness. And when I experimented with such things as diet, fasting and self regulation, I was dealing with it as a physical problem.
Of course, these various researches often over lapped and tended to become inclusive, but for the most part each was a highly specialized, exclusive endeavor. And each period was marked by a peculiar method. The area pursued also determined the nature of the work. The object created the subject, and the subject reinforced the object. And in every case the end phenomenon was the same. It was understanding. It was concentration and observation. Then insight. Then enjoyment or freedom on the basis of that insight. Finally, the recognition of understanding itself as primary and prior to the search.
Until I had exhaustively investigated every unique area of the “problem,” there was no conclusive understanding. Thus, each moment of primary understanding, such as the crisis in college or the one in seminary, was only a temporary state. It formed only a moment of transition prior to the next phase, the next level of the problem. But when every aspect of life as a problem and a search was exhausted, there was only understanding. Then I recognized the similarity between each moment of attainment. And I began to notice in detail the aspects of the way of understanding itself as a radical path, prior to every kind of seeking.
The more I continued to indulge the yogic process the more I realized that it only and continually drew me into the forms of seeking, either for the Shakti, the Self, or understanding. Thus, at last I saw that understanding was itself the only radical process, and enquiry was its activity. Then I abandoned the meditation on the chakras and the entire yogic process for enquiry. And enquiry was always epitomized as contemplation in the Heart, and the meditation of bliss in the Amrita Nadi.
I saw there was only a simple activity and concept manifesting under the form of every kind of remedial activity. It was always Narcissus, the logic and activity of separation. I examined all of this yoga, all of this seeking and performing, and all of its results, and I asked myself: Why? Why should such activities be engaged at all? What are the motives for meditating? And the more radical my understanding became, the more absurd, unnecessary and impossible it became to justify any of these exploits.
All ways showed themselves to be founded in some problem, some aspect of life as dilemma. There was the physical problem, the vital problem, the problem of the mind, the problem of spirituality and super-consciousness. There was the problem of morality, love, communication, sex, the problem of sin, suffering, the problem of powers, reality, truth, and the universe itself. Even the way of Ramana Maharshi was concerned with the problem of identity. But I saw that the problem, in any form, always had the same structure, and the same fundamental assumptions. Thus, I became concerned with motivation, the principle of these various kinds of action, belief, knowledge, etc. I saw that, since all ways were founded in a problem, real life must be founded in the understanding of the primary problem that is the source of all ordinary activity. Only thus do we know and enjoy reality, even in spite of moment to moment problem creation.
I saw that understanding was itself motiveless. But everything else was in fact the avoidance of relationship, and this was their very motivation! Thus, the longer a man lives, the more complicated, contradictory and suffering life appears.
the meditation of understanding
The following are from my studies at Tulane University (1973-4) and a book Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, written in 1929.
Discrimination is the result of memory (VASANA…habit energy) accumulated from the unknown past. VASANA (memory) literally means ‘perfuming’ or ‘fumigation’, that is, it is a kind of energy that is left behind when an act is accomplished and has the power to rekindle the old and seek out new impressions.
Through this ‘perfuming’ reelection takes place which is the thing as discrimination, and we have a world of opposites and contraries with all its practical consequences. The triple world, so called, is therefore the shadow of a self-reflecting and self-creating mind. Hence the doctrine of “MIND ONLY” (cittamatra)
VASANA (habit energy) is so contaminated with ignorance and wrong judgments and all sorts of attachments, it reacts upon an external world in a way detrimental to the realization of truth. The state of realization is obtained by a means of revulsion (Paravritti) at the deepest seat of consciousness know as the Alayavijnana.
Alayavijnana is a kind of mental receptacle where all the memory of one’s past deeds and psychic activities is deposited and preserved in a form of energy called VASANA or habit energy.
Vasana -Habit energy — karma
This is one of the most important conceptions in the system of Vijnana (Mind).
Vasana comes from the root VAS meaning “to dwell”, “to stay” or “to perfume” and used in combination, that is, in the sense of a perfuming energy that leaves its essence permanently behind in the things it has perfumed. The Chinese have translated it “habit”, “long usage” or “repeated experience”. Vasana is therefore a kind of super-sensuous energy mysteriously emanating from every thought, every feeling, or every deed one has done or does, which lives latently in the storehouse called Alayavijnana.
Vasana is morally corrupt and logically erroneous inasmuch as it creates an external world and causes us to cling to it as real and final. In modern psychology, we can say that vasana corresponds to memory in its widest sense. This perfuming or leaving impressions is sometimes known as BIJA (memory/sowing seeds).
Psychologically vasana is memory, for it is something left after a deed is done, mental or physical, and it retained and stored in the Alaya as a sort of latent energy ready to be set in motion. this memory or ‘habit-energy’, or ‘habitual perfuming is not necessarily individual’ the Alaya being super-individual holds in it not only individual memory but all that has been experienced by sentient beings. When the sutra says that in the Alaya is found all that has been going on sine beginningless time systematically stored up as a kind of seed, this does not refer to individual experiences, but to something general, beyond the individual, making up in a way the background on which all individual psychic activities are reflected. Therefore, the alaya is originally pure, it is the abode of Tathagatahood (Buddhahood), where no defilement’s of the particle arising intellect and affection can reach; purity in terms of logic means universality, and defilement’s or sins means individuation, from which attachments of various forms are derived.
In short, the world starts from memory, memory in itself as retained in the Alaya universal mind. When we are removed from the influence of false discrimination the whole Vijnana system woven around the Alaya as center experiences a revulsion toward true perception (paravritt). This is the gist of the teaching of the Lankavatara.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ:
The experience of Me is not something remembered. There is no Spiritual event in the past that really is happening. People accumulate ideas and self-imagery based on this or that event that takes place in various moments of their living. And their idea of themselves, even as being somehow Spiritually aware, is based on this memory of their lives.
Whereas there is no relevant past Spiritualityat least not that is relevant to the actual moment in which existence is happening now. You are no more “Spiritual” than you are right now.
It does not make any difference how many experiences, or what experiences of Me may or may not be true or you declare to have happened — you are no more Spiritually aware of Me than you are right now. You are no more devotionally responsive to Me than you are right now. It is always a present-time process.
Fundamentally then, nothing that occurred in the past, nothing you have ever thought or experienced, is relevant. It is always now with Me, and that is that. Then it is whatever it is now with Me. It is always about that turning.
So the content, the memory, the accumulated patterns, the tendencies, the self-report, the self-imagethese things are totally irrelevant. If the intention were to discuss something that required you to recount experiences, it has relevance to that discussion. But relative to the matter of actual Communion with Me now, it is irrelevant, always irrelevant. [May 25, 2005]
1970 – Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj) – unpublished.
The “prarabdha” karma, the remaining movements of one who understands, is a dramatization or activity that can take any number of forms. He witnesses all that arises as motive and action, he enquires, and realizes all such movements in the Heart. “Prarabdha” is not a matter of indulging various desires and patterns That arise, but of enquiring while free of the necessary attachment to motive and act. “Prarabdha” is not dramatization but enquiry. where any movement is not realized in the Heart, it is only movement, not understanding, and enquiry follows all such things.
One who understands may appear in many forms of action, for his life is ordinary. It is only that he understands and enquires, and so all his action becomes a creative occasion of truth. He enquires until understanding is perfect as the Heart. Then he lives only as truth, without drama, until the stillness takes his life.
Those who understand in truth seem to live a drama of many kinds. Those who live as radical understanding are only true to understanding. Those who understand perfectly no longer appear outside the Heart. They are not seen in any form, but such are the Heart itself.